chris' hand (archive footage)

outside of KSR region itself, Bangkok is an incredibly vibrant city with steamy and sizzling street food options down every street. shaved and sweaty meats hang from food carts while spicy fumes from overworked woks choke your air-pollution constricted windpipe in a fit of cough and mucus. in short, it's paradise. the happiest place on earth is neither Disneyworld nor Tijuana, Mexico, it's downtown Bangkok (aka the city of angel - no plurals in the Thai language). aside from Los Angeles, California (also the city of angels - plurals exist in english), there are few places with such an dense concentration of beautiful women however 'dense' may carry another level of meaning when referring to the lovely ladies of LA. don't bother even trying because they're completely out of your league, you squadron of quasimotos. coincidentally, beyond sharing the same city moniker, LA is home to just as many, if not more, Thai restaurants and incongruously gorgeous prostitutes.

THE BAD (& THE UGLY)

the self-prescribed medicine to reach new depths of depression on KSR naturally involve large doses of the lowest forms of humanity freshly jet-lagged from the western hemisphere. with scant extra money derived from minimum-wage jobs, these mainly older farang (white foreigners) take advantage of the beneficial exchange rate to flaunt their Thai Baht and flagrantly violate all rules of class (think: school in the summer time) and dignity they supposedly learned in the 'educated' west. often their behavior is excused, if not exponentially compounded by the 'white-is-right' mentality followed like sheep by many of the local populace. a white man from a foreign country, regardless of their absolute bottom-feeding status at home, is inconceivably (or paradoxically) revered by the oft-too-kind Thai people. this, as well as the chilling thought of Thai monks who are disallowed from wearing underwear beneath their robes, show Buddhism indeed has a negative side.

and who can forget the old ugly low class white guy w/ gorgeous (but lazy) thai girl; i describe them as lazy because instead of working hard for a piece of the pie, she betrays her moral upbringing to date or marry an older, ugly, and often overweight falang for a more comfortable and padded life.

but you know all this so check out the most common scene in Thailand:

another sub-species commonly found out of their natural habitat in Bangkok are the dreadlocked foreigners on their way to/from India. granted, these are the kinder and more harmless members of the farang 'elite' but their holier-than-thou rhetoric and in-your-face dogma can irritate even the most devout Buddhist. by choosing their individual appearance and ideology, they ironically relegate themselves into a larger stereotypical (& lice-ridden) group, ultimately defeating their self-proclaimed uniqueness. really, guys, would running some soap through that matted back-hair kill ya?

it's 2550 on the Thai calendar, the year of our lord Buddha. at this time in my traveling career, i'm simply chasing festivals for the photographic opportunities they provide. i rarely mix with other travelers, preferring truly independent journeying while sobbing myself to a quiet sleep after the last of the overnighting prostitutes have entered into their recurring dream of old white guys and conical rice-paddy hats overflowing with shopping money.

who am i to make these claims? i'm just an observer, a wandering warmdoucher with a Canon 5D camera. a journeyman with man-boobs that simply wants solitude to use his Canon 5D professional dSLR camera. a miniature sizzle-chest, unendowed with looks or stature but gifted with a Canon 5D dSLR camera with Canon's latest Digic II processor to deliver 13 mega-pixel, full-frame, 3 frames-per-second images at a reasonable price.

Canon & Diet Coke. you can reach dozens. sponsorship opportunities abound at thejerk.org. email me for details.